The Technological Singularity is coming. I and others like me have been describing it and generating ideas for what it may be like and how to deal with it for decades now. But the time for education is over. We are heading into the vortex. There is no turning back.
People protesting the construction of AI data centers in Texas and other regions are fooling themselves. Erin Brockovich’s map of new data center constructions is a waste of time. This cannot be stopped.
We cannot prevent the Technological Singularity from coming, and even if we could, we should not try. If we do not build it first, China may build it first, and that would lead to a far worse outcome.
You may as well strap in. Pray. Hope for the best. We have passed the event horizon. Apparently, that is what Sam Altman meant when he said we are in the Singularity. Who knows. The moment is upon us. Enjoy the ride.
spikosauropod 
why would it be worse if China got there first? How many cities has the CCP subjected to atomic bombing?
Zero.
How many cities have other nations subjected to atomic bombing? All have aggressively used precisely zero atomic weapons….except one: the USA.
This is hardly the only case in which the USA’s impact on the world has been pretty much uniquely harmful. The economic system this country champions has killed a thousand million people, if you use the dubious definitions of causation used in the Black Book of Communism. And we’re supposed to hope the big, bullying USA gets to wield the power of SAI?
Dear oh dear!
oh…this is she with the glasses and the sparkies. You know me of old. MindX, Bescape…
Your argument relies on an extremely selective reading of history.
The fact that the United States is the only nation ever to have used atomic weapons does not, by itself, establish that it is uniquely dangerous or that another great power would necessarily behave more responsibly if it developed ASI first.
The atomic bombings occurred in the context of a world war that had already killed tens of millions of people. Historians continue to debate whether they shortened the war or were necessary, but there is no serious dispute that they took place under circumstances unlike anything that has existed since. One can condemn those bombings while still recognizing that a single historical event from 1945 is an extraordinarily weak basis for predicting how a nation would govern a superintelligence decades later.
Nor is it persuasive to ask how many cities the CCP has subjected to atomic bombing. China has never fought a war in which it possessed nuclear weapons against a major industrial opponent. The relevant question is not, “How many atomic bombs has it dropped?” but, “How has it exercised power when it has had the opportunity?”
The CCP’s record includes the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in one of the largest famines in human history, the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square crackdown, extensive censorship, mass surveillance, the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the dismantling of civil liberties in Hong Kong, and repeated threats to use force against Taiwan. None of these involved nuclear weapons, but they tell us quite a bit about how the Party exercises centralized power.
Likewise, portraying the United States as the uniquely harmful champion of capitalism requires accepting highly controversial methods of assigning responsibility. If one is willing to attribute every death associated with poverty or economic systems to capitalism, consistency would require applying equally broad standards to authoritarian socialist systems. Under those standards, communist governments would also bear responsibility for tens of millions of deaths resulting from famine, political repression, forced labor, and disastrous economic policies.
The more important issue, however, is not whether the United States or China has the cleaner historical record. It is what institutional environment is more likely to produce an aligned ASI.
The United States, for all its flaws, has competitive elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, private universities, competing AI laboratories, whistleblower protections, and vigorous public criticism of government policy. Those institutions are imperfect, but they create multiple channels for detecting mistakes and correcting them.
China’s AI development occurs within a one-party state where political conformity is expected, criticism of the leadership is constrained, and information is routinely suppressed. If alignment is fundamentally a problem of recognizing and correcting errors, then a political system that discourages open criticism is at a structural disadvantage.
This is not an argument that America is morally pure. It plainly is not. It is an argument that concentrated power combined with limited mechanisms for self-correction is a dangerous combination, especially when the technology in question could become vastly more capable than any human institution.
The hope should not be that any particular nation “wins” in some triumphalist sense. The hope should be that the first ASI emerges from an environment with the greatest transparency, the greatest diversity of viewpoints, the strongest scientific culture, and the greatest capacity to recognize and correct its own mistakes. On those criteria, liberal democracies presently have important advantages over authoritarian states.
Former Communist countries ARE held responsible for tens of millions of deaths by the likes of Jordan Peterson who keep repeating that “ten million people died under Communism”. But, using the same dubious standards of causation the Black Book of Communism used to arrive at that figure and applying them to Capitalism, we get a figure of a THOUSAND million deaths.
Of course, the USA alone is not to blame for what a global economic system has done. Nor is it to blame for the fact that Hong Kong was never really democratic under British colonial rule. Actually the people lived under a brutal and racist police force.
But when it comes to why alternative economic/political systems fail, it is hardly ever the case that the inadequacies of those systems leads to their downfall. Actually, all of them were subject to sabotage by the USA, using CIA operations, proxy wars, financial pressure and, if all else fails, its military might to wreck any chance an alternative to Capitalism might have. Which is odd if you think about it. More than any other nation, the USA champions Capitalism as naturally superior but it does not seem at all confident to leave people alone to try out alternatives.
I do not think we can all rest easy if this intolerant bully gets to wield the formidable power of SAI.
Ex.
I also think this race to ASI has a lot to do with a fact regarding debt that I found out while writing those books you kindly repost on your blog. And the fact is this: a debt is only as real as the likelihood of your encountering a more powerful creditor who can make you pay, one way or another.
Since most of us will certainly encounter much more powerful creditors our debts are very real indeed. But if you are the most powerful nation, and there is no superior creditor who can call in your debts, why in that case you can just allow that debt to roll over into the indefinite future, not at all concerned as it accumulates to tens of trillions and beyond. Yes, ordinary people in the USA need worry about their debts. The federal government of the USA really does not.
But that would change if some other nation managed to surpass it militarily, financially and politically. If China did beat the USA to ASI that might happen, and then all that debt the elites of the country don’t need to care about would suddenly seem very real indeed.
So no wonder the USA is striving to be the first to acquire SAI!
There are several issues with your argument.
First, the claim that capitalism has killed a billion people depends almost entirely on an expansive definition of causation. If one attributes every death associated with poverty, inadequate healthcare, sanctions, or economic inequality to “capitalism,” then one has adopted a standard so broad that virtually every political and economic system becomes responsible for enormous numbers of deaths. Such figures may be rhetorically effective, but they are not particularly useful for comparing systems.
Second, it is certainly true that the United States has intervened in the affairs of many other countries. There have been CIA operations, proxy wars, economic sanctions, and military interventions. Some were justified, some were not, and many remain controversial. Acknowledging those facts does not establish that every socialist or communist experiment failed solely because of American interference.
Many failed largely because of their own internal economic and political structures. The Soviet Union’s chronic shortages, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, Venezuela’s economic collapse, and countless smaller examples cannot plausibly be explained primarily by CIA sabotage. Central planning, suppression of market signals, concentration of political power, and the absence of meaningful feedback all contributed substantially to those failures.
Third, your debt argument misunderstands why the United States can sustain high levels of public debt. It is not because America is the world’s biggest bully and therefore no one can collect.
Governments do not resemble households. The United States issues debt denominated in dollars, a currency it controls. Investors voluntarily purchase Treasury securities because they regard them as among the safest assets in the world. The government’s ability to service its debt depends primarily on the productive capacity of the American economy, tax revenues, monetary policy, inflation expectations, and continued confidence in U.S. institutions—not on the absence of a militarily superior creditor.
If China became wealthier or even militarily stronger, it would not suddenly acquire the legal ability to “call in” America’s national debt. Treasury securities have fixed contractual terms. Their holders cannot demand immediate repayment simply because the geopolitical balance changes.
Finally, even if one accepted your criticisms of American foreign policy, they do not answer the original question: which political system is more likely to develop an aligned ASI?
That question concerns institutional incentives rather than historical virtue.
A society with a free press, independent courts, vigorous scientific debate, competing private laboratories, public criticism of government policy, and competitive elections possesses numerous mechanisms for identifying mistakes before they become catastrophes.
A one-party state that suppresses dissent, censors information, and discourages criticism possesses far fewer such mechanisms.
Alignment is fundamentally an error-correction problem. History strongly suggests that institutions capable of admitting and correcting their own mistakes outperform institutions that suppress evidence of error.
This is not an argument that the United States is morally superior in every respect. It plainly is not. It is an argument that, when developing perhaps the most consequential technology in history, systems that tolerate criticism and distribute power are more likely to detect dangerous failures than systems that centralize authority and restrict open disagreement.
That is why I would prefer ASI to emerge first from a liberal democracy rather than from an authoritarian state. My preference is based less on national virtue than on institutional design.
your reply was pretty much spot on. It did a good job of countering my points.
Thanks for that,
Ex.